There’s a beat of silence, and Bonnie laughs. “Erin’s now an expert in love because she’s been with her boyfriend for three years.”
“I’m just saying, the people on that show are lusting after each other. It’s all horniness, not love,” Erin says.
There’s a beat of silence before I change the topic. “Curtis and I are going to go to the beach and play soccer. Anyone else joining us? I know you want to stay home,” I say to Kennedy.
“Yeah, I reckon we’re all going to binge the TV show,” Erin says, sharing a glance with Bonnie. “We’ve already gone on a run, and we’re pretty tired.”
“How does everyone in this house wake up so early?” I ask. Even Kennedy wakes up pretty early — I know after years of sleepovers when she’d act as a human alarm clock, waking me up before eight when I wanted to sleep in.
“No worries,” Curtis says. “We should be back in a few hours.”
“What are you going to do about the movie?” Kennedy asks him, in a lower voice. I don’t want to eavesdrop on their conversation, so I pay attention to the bets the cousins are placing on the reality TV show about which couples are going to win and which will be voted off.
The kitchen empties — the cousins go to their rooms, and Curtis searches the backyard for the soccer ball — so it’s just Kennedy and me.
“Be nice,” Kennedy says.
“Don’t worry,” I say, finishing my breakfast. “I’ve only broken my promise a handful of times.” It’s a joke, but Kennedy doesn’t smile. “Seriously, though, I’ll be nice. It’s not that difficult. Curtis isn’t awful.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Kennedy says. “I told you he’s —”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say, blocking out Kennedy’s barrage of compliments about her boyfriend. “Anyway, I have a more important matter to bring up. How could you forget I like milk and sugar in my coffee?”
Yes, I’m still preoccupied about that, but Kennedy made me go through the fuss of making green tea for Curtis. In fact, she’s brainwashed me so much that I’m now making a cup for him every night without thinking about it.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Kennedy says, brow creased. “What are you —” Her eyes catch on someone behind me.
I turn and see Curtis has just arrived in the doorway, holding the soccer ball in one hand. “You almost ready?”
I straighten up, hopefully not looking like I was having a suspicious conversation with Kennedy. “I’ll be out the door in a minute,” I say, taking my dishes to the sink.
*
It doesn’t take us long to walk to the beach, and since it’s still morning, it’s not too busy. We go to the stretch of sand we went to before, and play one on one. I expect an easy game, but quickly learn I’m mistaken.
“Is this your idea of retribution?” I ask after Curtis kicks a goal through my line in the sand for the fifth time. “Making up for when you lost that other game?”
Curtis wipes his brow with the back of his hand. “I didn’t lose.”
“If you count the scores, you did. And I know you counted the scores.” I suck in a deep breath, trying to fill my lungs with air.
“That wasn’t a fair game, because of the teams —”
“Yeah, so you brought me here to rub in your superior athletic ability in my face,” I say. “Again.”
I start with the ball, and just before I run, Curtis says, “this isn’t retribution.”
Liar.
I kick the ball and try my best to dribble it across the sand, but Curtis steals it from me. And then he does it again. And again. As his tackling increases, so does mine, and I crowd him, getting my arms between us, or jumping in before him so he’s blocked by my back.
Every time I manoeuvre around him, I feel a thrill of victory and then the anticipation of him barrelling me over. If I still despised him, wrestling him would be fun, but now it’s just annoying because he always wins, pinning me to the ground. He’ll laugh good-naturedly and offer to pull me up as if he’s some sort of gentleman.
Now, I push him in the back and he falls over. Yes! Then my feet tangle with his and with an “oof” I fall on top of him.
I groan. “Ow.”
Curtis pushes himself up with his hands, and I slide off his back onto the sand beside him, looking up at the sun peeking through the clouds.
